Meet the city’s newest arts benefactors, the Vladems
With hefty donation to planned art museum annex, Vladems say they want to make city better
Santa Fe philanthropist Bob Vladem doesn’t do things halfway. New to town four years ago, he wasn’t about to wait for an invitation to join The Santa Fe Opera board of directors.
“It was a goal of mine to get on The Santa Fe Opera board as quickly as possible, to the point where I looked up the names of all the board members and started talking to them,” he said. “They would answer, ‘People usually wait to be asked.’ But I guess I don’t usually wait to be asked.”
Vladem and his wife, Ellen, who say they eschew the trappings of wealth but not the lure of philanthropy, made headlines recently when they donated $4 million for perpetual naming rights to the planned New Mexico Museum of Art contemporary art annex — or, soon, the New Mexico Museum of Art-Vladem Contemporary — at South Guadalupe Street and Montezuma Avenue.
The couple’s gift to the Museum of New Mexico Foundation’s Centennial Fund — commemorating the museum’s 100th year — toward its $10 million goal for the project raised eyebrows and interest among local nonprofits about future gifts. Vladem said he is already getting inquiries. “We had always been generous in Chicago, but certainly not to the extent that we became generous upon moving to Santa Fe,” said Vladem, who grew up on the north side of Chicago in the 1960s and was a certified public accountant before becoming a partner in multiple Pennsylvania car dealerships and starting trucking and logistics companies.
“At the risk of putting an even larger bull’s-eye on my forehead, I think I am everyone’s friend now,” he said. “Especially if they have a not-forprofit.”
The Vladems’ donation was “the single, largest gift in the history of the museum foundation,” foundation co-chairman Dan Perry said during the March 7 event announcing the news.
But the donation and the attention it brings isn’t a burden, Vladem said. “Going forward, philanthropy will be like our third child.”
Vladem “didn’t grow up with any money,” he said, but was able to make the transition from life as a CPA by getting involved with mergers and acquisitions. Soon, he was buying companies.
“I had a client whose son had just flunked out of college, and he needed me to find that son a business, as I had found him many businesses,” Vladem said. He found the client’s son a business and thought that would make him happy.
Instead, he said, the client yelled at him: “Why aren’t you doing this for yourself ?”
A year later, he said, “I had the opportunity to buy a business and bought it and haven’t stopped.”
Today, Vladem is “mostly retired.”
His interests went from fiduciary to Figaro, thanks to Ellen.
“I was interested in the opera as soon as I met my wife,” Vladem said. “She is the original opera fan.”
He met his wife of 38 years at a folk dancing group.
“From across the room, he saw me,” Ellen said.
Bob told a friend that night, “That’s the girl I am going to marry.”
Ellen, who grew up in Chicago, said her parents instilled in her a love of opera and museums.
“My parents started going to the Lyric Opera [of Chicago] in 1954,” she said, “and when I got older, if my mother had seen an opera, she would tell my father to take me to see the opera.”
Bob Vladem took to librettos as if they they were ledgers.
“When Ellen introduced me to the opera,” he said, “in my usual fashion, I started studying it and studying it and becoming more interested, and I have a hard time doing anything halfway; it’s all or nothing.”
After arriving in Santa Fe and being named to the opera board in 2014, Vladem became the board’s secretary. He also chairs and cochairs several committees. His wife volunteers at the opera gift shop.
“It’s a lot of work, but it’s work for something that you love,” he said. “People are interested in my enthusiasm.”
The couple, both in their 60s, have underwritten several operas.
“Bob goes to all the rehearsals, the technical rehearsals that go to 5 a.m.,” Ellen said.
The couple discovered Santa Fe in 2010 when Bob accompanied their daughter Corey, 25, for a visit to St. John’s College, which she attended. Their younger daughter, 19-year-old Loren, attends college in Washington state.
“He fell in love with Santa Fe when he first saw it, instantaneously,” Ellen said.
Once they moved to town, the couple’s local interests extended beyond opera, eventually moving to the museum.
“This contemporary art museum is really Ellen’s idea,” Bob Vladem said. “She said if we really want to give a gift to Santa Fe that it should be wider and touch more people.”
The basis of philanthropy, he added, is “how many positive experiences can you give people — and, certainly, an art museum located in the Railyard is going to have a lot more visits than an opera company that’s seasonal and a limited venue of seats.”
Friends invited the Vladems to an art museum board meeting. Initially, Bob Vladem said, they didn’t have a lot of interest in the fundraising effort. Then the idea of a contemporary museum in an old warehouse moved them.
“I only had one question: Are the naming rights in perpetuity?” he said. “Also, the fact that we think of our philanthropy now as transformational” — a gift given because the need for funding is so great, a project is not likely to be successful without the donation.
“Having my name on something, I think this was more my thing,” he said. “I guess I am more vain than Ellen, but that was important to me. Something that would exist well beyond.”
The museum’s fundraising effort is still in its early days. Some donors can see their names on things like individual bricks and louvers for $100, Vladem said. “Anyone in Santa Fe will be able to put their name on the museum.”
Due to his driven nature, Ellen said, the museum foundation board “will also receive lots of ideas from Bob Vladem.”
She will be a docent when the facility opens, she added.
The couple’s friends were surprised when photos showing the Vladems holding a $4 million check during the donation event at the Halpin Building — the site of the future contemporary art museum — appeared in newspapers.
“A lot of my friends were very shocked to hear the news of our donation, the dollar amount,” Ellen
said. “Really shocked.”
“I don’t think they thought we had a spare $4 million to create a contemporary art museum,” her husband added. “I really enjoy giving away money.”
Bob Vladem downplayed the notion of a stereotypical image of a wealthy couple. “The trappings of wealth don’t matter to us,” he said. “We are just pretty ordinary people.
“We could very easily kick our lifestyle up,” he said. “We live in a very nice house. It’s modestly sized in a very nice area” on the city’s east side. “It’s certainly not a house in keeping with what we could afford. We don’t have a private plane; we don’t even fly first class.”
Going forward, he said, he would
“probably will get involved with more educational charities.”
Asked how would the couple would like to be remembered in 50 years, Ellen said, “We want to be remembered for our gift to Santa Fe, that this is for all people.”
The museum “will be an anchor to the Railyard,” Ellen said, “and hopefully it will inspire more contemporary artists to come into the area. I think we want to be remembered for our love of Santa Fe and our philanthropic goals.”
Bob Vladem echoed his wife’s sentiments.
“I think I would like to be remembered for Santa Fe being better from us being here,” he said.